Good thing I went to the movies Sunday. Not only did I see a movie I liked, but I also saw an announcement that I considered worth dissection.

You’ve noticed, if you go to movies at all, the overkill theaters are marshalling to get people to TURN YOUR CELL PHONES OFF! There used to be announcements like that about not smoking in the theater, but smoking’s not even on the radar anymore. Today the scourge is cell phones, and I see the point. There are some who just don’t get the message; and they disturb everybody. However, I think the people who miss four announcements are probably unlikely to respond to a fifth.

But one of the announcements was pretty clever. You may have seen it.

It’s a little mini-narrative, starting out with an aspiring screen writer, a schlumpy guy, sitting in his lousy apartment, getting a phone call from his agent, announcing that a studio is interested in his script.

The rest of the story unfolds in a series of succeeding phone calls, as the writer goes rapidly through the process of getting the deal signed and doing business with the studio and production. At each stage he’s dressing and living a little better, and agreeing to compromises that clearly aren’t going to make the film better.

At the end, somebody at the studio is proposing that they change his film (originally about Jack the Ripper) to a story about a rapper. And the writer, still a schlump, but now well-dressed and driving a nice car, glances over at his new girlfriend (a visibly dumb but tall and extremely hot supermodel-type), and says, “Sure, I can go with that.”

The punch line is, “One phone call can ruin a movie. Don’t let it be yours.” Or words to that effect.

What intrigued me was one particular short vignette in this decline-and-fall scenario. At one point the writer’s talking on the phone to another studio type, and the guy says, “I wonder if we can make this story a little kinder and gentler.”

“It’s about Jack the Ripper,” says the writer.

“Yeah, I know, but why can’t we do a family-friendly Jack the Ripper?”

It occurred to me that this is how Hollywood sees itself. They see themselves as better than the writer schlump. They’re holding out against malevolent forces forever pressuring them to water down their work, strip it of its realism and edginess, and make it innocuous and inoffensive.

I’ve never worked in the film industry, but from what I read (for instance, over at Big Hollywood), it seems far more likely to me that somebody trying to get a family film made would be pressured by the studio to “sex it up; make the girl a stripper or something,” than that somebody trying to do a slasher film would be pressured to tone down the gore.

But Hollywood people generally don’t see it that way. Because that would mean they’re not rebels, but conformists and yes-men.

And that would be more disturbing than a cell phone ringing in a theater.